This suite of engravings, with texts in Dutch and French, presents an ironic celebration of the seven “heroic virtues” of Louis XIV and his allies. The first virtue is charity, visually expressed through the king’s solar emblem. But instead of being beneficial to the world, Louis XIV is a “sun of injustice”; each ray identifies one of his many crimes, from adultery and incest to treachery, murder, and sacrilege.

The print parodies a similarly designed French engraving surrounded by this inscription: “Louis on earth is radiant like the sun in the skies. His virtues will be in history like so many rays of his glory.”